Why the **** do we swear all the time? WARNING: This post contains naughty words

‘Joe, did you know that the F-word is said more times in the movie we’re standing in than in Goodfellas?’ (Picture: SKY TV)

How many times have you sworn today already? Come on, tell the truth.

You probably exclaimed, ‘Oh fudge’, when you realised the Easter holidays were over this morning. It’s likely you muttered something such as ‘Fiddle-dee-dee’ when the train pulled away from the platform without you. And you greeted the sight of the next packed train with a scream of ‘Poppyock!’ Yes, that WAS you, wasn’t it?

Okay, so there are quite a few swear words which are a bit stronger than that lot. We know them because we hear them every day. Swearing is all around us. It is our way of showing that sometimes polite vocabulary isn’t sufficient to express our frustration.

‘The point of swearing, in many cases, is to vent one’s emotions and convey emotional information about one’s state of mind to others,’ explained Dr Timothy Jay, from the department of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

‘No other language is this efficient or effective at conveying emotional information.’

‘Some swear words lose their punch. “Oh my God” has declined in power as have other profanities such as “hell”, “damn” and “goddam”.

‘Some slang exhausts itself and is replaced by new slang, but the old swear words such as “f***” and “s***” have been around for almost 1,000 years and they are still powerful.

‘Language is organic and it grows what it needs and kills off what is obsolete, so if a word fell from use there was probably a good reason for it.’

Dr Jay was a friend of the late US stand-up comedian George Carlin, whose famous 1970s routine, Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, blazed a trail for the swear words we know, love and hate today. A trail that has led right up to The Book of Mormon musical, written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which opened in London last month.

But profanity wasn’t invented in the last century.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the first grunts from our ancestors were actually swear words,’ said Jean-Marc Dewaele, linguistics professor at Birbeck, University of London and the author of the scientific paper, ‘Christ f***ing s*** merde!’

‘There is no other way to say, “F*** you”, and convey the same level of contempt in polite language.’

Of the English swear words out there, Prof Dewaele likes ‘bugger’, pointing out that it was wrongly derived from the French word, ‘Boulgrerie’, referring to the medieval Bulgarian religious sect of the Bogomils, who were believed at the time to be homosexuals.

He said is it difficult for us not to hear swear words, no matter how well protected our parents think we are.

‘In families where swearing is forbidden, children will pick up the words from friends. They sense that these words have a hidden aura and are keen to try them out themselves.’

Despite this, he doesn’t believe that profanity is proliferating.

‘I think swearing frequency has remained stable over the years. It’s typically the teenagers who swear most frequently – once they grow up, they swear less.’

Cursing has its advantages, he said.

‘It allows us to let off steam in a more or less acceptable way. It’s better to swear than to hit something or somebody in anger. It can give us the extra energy to endure pain.’

Indeed it does. Research carried out by Dr Richard Stephens, senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University, has shown that people can keep their hands in ice-cold water for longer if they utter swear words.

He came up with the idea for the study after hitting his fingers with a hammer and witnessing his wife give birth.

‘Because swearing is taboo and offensive to some people, when you swear you set off the fight-or-flight response in yourself,’ he explained.

‘One of the components of the fight-or-flight response is called stress-induced analgesia, which means you become less sensitive to pain.’

Dr Stephens said bad words can be funny (‘That’s why comedians swear so much’) but also harmful.

‘It has its dark side. Swearing can be used to bully people, it can be used to intimidate people, it can be used to upset people.’

But why are some words unacceptable?

‘History tells us that words that were once very potent lose that potency,’ he said. ‘When I was a teenager, I found a copy of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and whenever a character said the word “damn”, it was printed as “d—”.

‘Words like “c***” and the N-word will continue to be taboo for as long as society in general has the opinion that you shouldn’t be misogynistic and you shouldn’t be racist.’

There is another theory: that swears words upset us not because of their meaning, but because of their sound.

Professor Jeffrey Bowers, from the school of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol, conducted a study in which participants became stressed when they had to utter swear words.

‘It’s not really about the meaning or the intention – at least not entirely that – it’s also this stupid association between the sound and the emotional response because of conditioning,’ he said.

‘Just like “table” means something you eat dinner on, “f***” becomes associated with somebody yelling at you in disapproval or anger.

‘I don’t feel like saying the C-word to you just because I don’t like that word, and even though it’s clear I’m just using it in a conversation about swear words, I still don’t feel like saying it.’

He cited the example of BBC radio presenter James Naughtie’s mispronunciation of then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s surname during a broadcast in 2010 – and the complaints from listeners which followed.

‘It was clearly not intended but that didn’t seem to matter,’ said Prof Bowers. ‘A slip of the tongue was still offensive. Something about the sound, above and beyond the actual intention, seems to play a role in our response to that word.’

‘There are people who can’t get a sentence out without the F-word in it,’ he said. ‘And then there’s people who naturally react to a situation, like when a hammer hits the thumb instead of the nail and causes an outburst. The latter is probably excusable but the former isn’t.’

He said our environment plays a key role – we typically swear only in front of people we are comfortable with. Nevertheless, he thinks we need to cut it out.

‘I wish sometimes you could actually play an instant recording back to people that you hear swearing when you’re on public transport,’ he said. ‘It might make them think.

‘It’s laziness. We’ve got a wonderful English language with a great choice of words that we could use.’

But others disagree, pointing out that swearing can be clever, despite what your mum and dad told you when you were little.

‘People who are fluent with language are also fluent swearers,’ said Dr Jay. ‘It is not the case that people swear because they can’t express themselves – that is a myth.’

Love them or hate them, we should get used to swear words. They aren’t going anywhere.